“One can't write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses them and style alike with that grotesquerie and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror—for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving daemonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.”
Letter to Weird Tales editor Edwin Baird printed in Weird Tales 3, no. 3 (March 1924), pp. 89-92. Quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 122
Non-Fiction, Letters
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H.P. Lovecraft 203
American author 1890–1937Related quotes

“You can't live without illusions, even if you must fight for them.”

As quoted in Can A Smart Person Believe in God? (2004) by Michael Guillen, Ch. 7 : Hope Springs Eternal, p. 90

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Source: Free Trade Reimaginedː The World Division of Labor and the Method of Economics (2007), p. 210

Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 2, pg. 49.
(Buch I) (1867)

On ne peut réfléchir sur les precepts de la morale sans être étonné de les voir tout à la fois estimés et négligés; et l'on se demande la raison de cette bizarrerie du cœur humain, qui lui fait goûter des idées de bien et de perfection dont il s'éloigne dans la pratique.
Avis de l'auteur, pp. 30-31; translation p. 4.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

Patheos, Philosophistry http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/04/12/philosophistry/ (April 12, 2017)

You [the artist] dictate to it.
Source: 1961 - 1975, Art Talk, conversations with 15 woman artists', (1975), pp. 24-25